The Special Tony Award category includes the Lifetime Achievement Award and Special Tony Award. These are non-competitive honorary awards, and the titles have changed over the years. The Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre is to "honor an individual for the body of his or her work."[1] (The Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event was a competitive award, given from 2001 to 2009.) Another non-competitive Tony award is the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, to "recognize the achievements of individuals and organizations that do not fit into any of the competitive categories."[1]

1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci

2.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange

3.
Al Hirschfeld Theatre
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The Al Hirschfeld Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 302 West 45th Street in midtown Manhattan. Designed by architect G. Albert Lansburgh for vaudeville promoter Martin Beck and it was the only theatre in New York that was owned outright without a mortgage. It was designed to be the most opulent theatre of its time, the theatre has a seating capacity of 1,424 for musicals. Coffi in the musical Curtains, and Daniel Radcliffe in the latest revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and this is one of five theatres owned and operated by Jujamcyn Theatres, who purchased it in 1965 from the Beck family. In the Fall of 2002, Jujamcyn Theatres announced that the Martin Beck Theatre would be renamed in June 2003 in honor of illustrator Al Hirschfeld, as Hirschfeld approached his 100th birthday. Jujamcyn President Rocco Landesman described the renaming as “an important event for the history and heritage of Broadway. ”Landesman stated that “No one working in our world is more deserving than Al Hirschfeld. ”Notably, Hirschfeld has become the only visual artist to have a Broadway theater named after him. Although Hirschfeld died prior to the renaming on June 23,2003. Hirschfeld’s traditional aisle seat was vacant in his honor during the presentation. The theater constructed a new marquee to mark its renaming, featuring a version of Hirschfeld’s Self-Portrait As An Inkwell. West 45th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues was closed to traffic for the unveiling of the new marquee, the marquee was initially installed with red neon representing the “ink, ” but blue neon was later substituted because the red was perceived by some as “macabre”. 1931, The House of Connelly 1934, The Pirates of Penzance,1966, A Delicate Balance 1967, Hallelujah, Baby. 2012, Elf the Musical 2013, Kinky Boots The limited-engagement Elf the Musical achieved the box office record for the Al Hirschfield Theatre, the production grossed $1,572,835.50 over nine performances, for the week ending December 26,2010. Whos Who in the Theatre, edited by John Parker, tenth edition, revised, London,1947, p.1184

4.
Sardi's
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Sardis is a Continental restaurant located at 234 West 44th Street in the Theater District in Manhattan, in New York City. Known for the hundreds of caricatures of celebrities that adorn its walls. Melchiorre Pio Vincenzo Vincent Sardi, Sr. and his wife Eugenia Pallera opened their first eatery, The Little Restaurant, in the basement of 246 West 44th Street in 1921. When that building was slated for demolition in 1926, they accepted an offer from the theater magnates, the new restaurant, Sardis, opened March 5,1927. When business slowed after the move, Vincent Sardi sought a gimmick to attract customers, recalling the movie star caricatures that decorated the walls of Joe Zelli’s, a Parisian restaurant and jazz club, Sardi decided to recreate that effect in his establishment. He hired a Russian refugee named Alex Gard to draw Broadway celebrities, Sardi and Gard drew up a contract that stated Gard would make the caricatures in exchange for one meal per day at the restaurant. The first official caricature by Gard was of Ted Healy, the vaudevillian of Three Stooges fame, when Sardi’s son, Vincent Sardi, Jr. took over restaurant operations in 1947, he offered to change the terms of Gards agreement. Gard refused and continued to draw the caricatures in exchange for meals until his death, frequent mentions of the restaurant in newspaper columns by Walter Winchell and Ward Morehouse added to Sardi’s growing popularity. Winchell and Morehouse belonged to a group of newspapermen, press agents, heywood Broun, Mark Hellinger, press agent Irving Hoffman, actor George Jessel, and Ring Lardner were also Cheese Club members. In fact, it was Hoffman who first brought Alex Gard to Sardis for lunch at the Cheese Club table, Gard drew caricatures of the Cheese Club members, and Vincent Sardi hung them above their table. It was then that Sardi recalled the drawings at Zellis and made his deal with Gard, the restaurant became known as a pre- and post-theater hangout, as well as a location for opening night parties. Vincent Sardi, a lover, kept the restaurant open much later than others in the area to accommodate Broadway performers schedules. Alex Gard, who created more than 700 caricatures for the restaurant, after Gard, John Mackey took over drawing for the restaurant but was soon replaced by Don Bevan. Bevan did the drawings until 1974 when he retired, and was replaced by Brooklyn-born Richard Baratz, Baratz, who lives in Pennsylvania, continues to the present day as the Sardis caricaturist. As of 2005, there are more than 1,300 celebrity caricatures on display, according to actor Robert Cucciolis spokesperson Judy Katz, in an interview with Playbill, On the day Jimmy Cagney died, his caricature was stolen from the Sardis wall. Since then, when drawings are done, the originals go into a vault, one goes to the lucky subject of the caricature, the other up on the Sardis wall. This way, potential thieves wont have their moment, in 1979, Vincent Sardi, Jr. donated a collection of 227 caricatures from the restaurant to the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. While the Sardi family was Italian, their restaurants cuisine is not, rather it tends toward English food, in 1957, Vincent Sardi, Jr. collaborated with Helen Bryson to compile a cookbook of Sardis recipes

5.
Joe E. Brown
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Joe E. Brown was an American actor and comedian, remembered for his amiable screen persona, comic timing, and enormous elastic-mouth smile. He was one of the most popular American comedians in the 1930s and 1940s, with films like A Midsummer Nights Dream, Earthworm Tractors. In his later career Brown starred in Some Like It Hot, as Osgood Fielding III, in which he utters the famous punchline, Well, nobodys perfect. Joseph Evans Brown was born on July 28,1891, in Holgate, Ohio, near Toledo and he spent most of his childhood in Toledo. In 1902, at the age of ten, he joined a troupe of circus tumblers known as the Five Marvelous Ashtons, later he became a professional baseball player. Despite his skill, he declined an opportunity to sign with the New York Yankees to pursue his career as an entertainer, after three seasons he returned to the circus, then went into Vaudeville and finally starred on Broadway. He gradually added comedy to his act, and transformed himself into a comedian and he moved to Broadway in the 1920s, first appearing in the musical comedy Jim Jam Jems. In late 1928, Brown began making films, starting the year with Warner Bros. He quickly became a favorite with audiences, and shot to stardom after appearing in the first all-color all-talking musical comedy On with the Show. He starred in a number of lavish Technicolor Warner Brothers musical comedies including, Sally, Hold Everything, Song of the West, by 1931, Joe E. Brown had become such a star that his name was billed above the title in the films in which he appeared. In 1933 he starred in Son of a Sailor with Jean Muir, in 1934, Brown starred in A Very Honorable Guy with Alice White and Robert Barrat, in The Circus Clown again with Patricia Ellis and with Dorothy Burgess, and with Maxine Doyle in Six-Day Bike Rider. He starred in Polo Joe with Carol Hughes and Richard Skeets Gallagher, in 1933 and 1936, he became one of the top ten earners in films. He was sufficiently well known internationally by this point to be depicted in comic strips in the British comic Film Fun for twenty years from 1933 and he left Warner Brothers to work for producer David L. Loew, starring in Whens Your Birthday. In 1938, he starred in The Gladiator, a film adaptation of Philip Gordon Wylies 1930 novel Gladiator that influenced the creation of Superman. He gradually switched to making B pictures, in 1939, Brown testified before the House Immigration Committee in support of a bill that would allow 20,000 German Jewish refugee children into the US. He later adopted two refugee children, during WWII, he spent a great deal of time entertaining troops, spending many nights working and meeting servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen. He wrote of his experiences entertaining the troops in his book Your Kids, Joe E. Browns other two sons were in the military service. In 1942 Browns son, Captain Don E. Brown, was killed when his A-20 Havoc crashed near Palm Springs, at 50, Brown himself was too old to enlist, but he traveled thousands of miles at his own expense to entertain American troops

6.
The Importance of Being Earnest
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The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St Jamess Theatre in London and its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest Wildes most enduringly popular play. The successful opening night marked the climax of Wildes career but also heralded his downfall, the Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lord Alfred Douglas was Wildes lover, planned to present the writer with a bouquet of rotten vegetables and disrupt the show. Wilde was tipped off and Queensberry was refused admission, soon afterwards their feud came to a climax in court, where Wildes homosexual double life was revealed to the Victorian public and he was eventually sentenced to imprisonment. His notoriety caused the play, despite its success, to be closed after 86 performances. After his release, he published the play from exile in Paris, the Importance of Being Earnest has been revived many times since its premiere. It has been adapted for the cinema on three occasions, after the success of Wildes plays Lady Windermeres Fan and A Woman of No Importance, Wildes producers urged him to write further plays. In July 1894 he mooted his idea for The Importance of Being Earnest to George Alexander, Wilde spent the summer with his family at Worthing, where he wrote the play quickly in August. His fame now at its peak, he used the working title Lady Lancing to avoid pre-emptive speculation of its content. Many names and ideas in the play were borrowed from people or places the author had known, Lady Queensberry, Lord Alfred Douglass mother, for example, lived at Bracknell. Wilde continually revised the text over the months, no line was left untouched. In revising as he did, Wilde transformed standard nonsense into the more systemic, richard Ellmann argues that Wilde had reached his artistic maturity and wrote this work more surely and rapidly than before. When Henry Jamess Guy Domville failed, Alexander turned to Wilde, Alexander began his usual meticulous preparations, interrogating the author on each line and planning stage movements with a toy theatre. In the course of these rehearsals Alexander asked Wilde to shorten the play from four acts to three, Wilde agreed and combined elements of the second and third acts. The largest cut was the removal of the character of Mr. Gribsby, Algernon, who is posing as Ernest, will be led away to Holloway Jail unless he settles his accounts immediately. Jack finally agrees to pay for Ernest, everyone thinking that it is Algernons bill when in fact it is his own, the four-act version was first played on the radio in a BBC production and is still sometimes performed. Peter Raby argues that the structure is more effective. The play was first produced at the St Jamess Theatre on Valentines Day 1895 and it was freezing cold but Wilde arrived dressed in florid sobriety, wearing a green carnation

7.
June Lockhart
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June Lockhart is an American actress, primarily in 1950s and 1960s television, also with performances on stage and in film. She played the mother in two TV series, Lassie and Lost in Space and she also portrayed Dr. Janet Craig on the CBS television sitcom Petticoat Junction. She is a two-time Emmy Award nominee and a Tony Award winner and her grandfather was John Coates Lockhart, a concert-singer. She attended the Westlake School for Girls in Beverly Hills, California, Lockhart made her film debut opposite her parents in a film version of A Christmas Carol, in 1938. She also played supporting parts in films including Meet Me in St. Louis, Sergeant York, All This, Lockhart played the title role in She-Wolf of London. Lockhart debuted on stage at the age of eight, playing Mimsey in Peter Ibbetson, in 1947, her acting in For Love or Money brought her out of her parents shadow and gained her notice as a promising movie actress in her own right. One newspaper article began, June Lockhart has burst on Broadway with the suddenness of an unpredicted comet, in 1951, Lockhart starred in Lawrence Rileys biographical play Kin Hubbard opposite Tom Ewell. In 1955, Lockhart appeared in an episode of CBSs Appointment with Adventure, about this time, she also made several appearances on NBCs legal drama Justice, based on case files of the Legal Aid Society of New York. In the late 1950s, Lockhart guest-starred in several popular television Westerns including, Wagon Train and Cimarron City on NBC and Gunsmoke, Have Gun – Will Travel, and Rawhide on CBS. Lockhart is best known for her roles as TV mothers, first as Ruth Martin, the wife of Paul Martin, and she replaced actress Cloris Leachman, who, in turn, had replaced Jan Clayton - who had played a similar character earlier in the series. Following her five-year run on Lassie Lockhart made a guest appearance on Perry Mason as defendant Mona Stanton Harvey in The Case of the Scandalous Sculptor. Lockhart then starred as Dr. Maureen Robinson in Lost in Space, in 1965, Lockhart played librarian Ina Coolbrith, first poet laureate of California, in the episode Magic Locket of the syndicated western series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Ronald W. Reagan. In the storyline, Coolbrith develops a friendship with the teenaged Dorita Duncan. The two have identical portions of a broken locket, sean McClory played the poet Joaquin Miller, author of Songs of the Sierras. Lockhart would then appear as Dr, in 1986, she appeared in the fantasy film, Troll. The younger version of her character in film was played by her daughter. They had previously played the woman at two different ages in the Lest We Forget episode of the television series Magnum, P. I. In 1991, Lockhart appeared as Miss Wiltrout, Michelle Tanners kindergarten teacher on the TV sitcom Full House and she also had a cameo in the 1998 film Lost in Space, based on the television series she had starred in thirty years earlier

8.
Mary Martin
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Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress, singer, and Broadway star. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles over her career, including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and she was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was the mother of actor Larry Hagman, Martin was born in Weatherford, Texas. Her life as a child, as she describes it in her autobiography My Heart Belongs, was secure and she had close relationships with both her mother and father, as well as her siblings. Her autobiography details how the young actress had an ear for recreating musical sounds. Martins father, Preston Martin, was a lawyer, and her mother, although the doctors told Juanita that she would risk her life if she attempted to have another baby, she was determined to have a boy. Instead, she had Mary, who became quite a tomboy and her family had a barn and orchard that kept her entertained. She played with her elder sister Geraldine, climbing trees and riding ponies and he was tall, good-looking, silver-haired, with the kindest brown eyes. Mother was the disciplinarian, but it was Daddy who could turn me into an angel with just one look, Martin, who said I’d never understand the law, began singing outside the courtroom where her father worked every Saturday night at a bandstand. She sang in a trio with her sister and Marion Swofford, even in those days without microphones, my high piping voice carried all over the square. I have always thought that I inherited my carrying voice from my father and she remembered having a photographic memory as a child, making it easy to memorize songs, as well as get her through school tests. She got her first taste of singing solo at a fire hall, sometimes I think that I cheated my own family and my closest friends by giving to audiences so much of the love I might have kept for them. But thats the way I was made, I truly dont think I could help it, Martins craft was developed by seeing movies and becoming a mimic. She would win prizes for looking, acting and dancing like Ruby Keeler, never, never, never can I say I had a frustrating childhood. Mother used to say she never had such a happy child—that I awakened each morning with a smile. I dont remember that, but I do remember that I never wanted to go to bed, to go to sleep, during high school, Martin dated Benjamin Hagman, before she was packed off to finishing school at Ward–Belmont in Nashville, Tennessee. During that time, she enjoyed imitating Fanny Brice at singing gigs and she was homesick for Weatherford, her family, and Hagman. During a visit, Mary and Benjamin persuaded Marys mother to them to marry

9.
Charles Boyer
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Charles Boyer was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage and his memorable performances were among the eras most highly praised, in romantic dramas such as The Garden of Allah, Algiers, and Love Affair, as well as the mystery-thriller Gaslight. He received four Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, Boyer was born in Figeac, Lot, France, the son of Augustine Louise Durand and Maurice Boyer, a merchant. Boyer was a shy, small-town boy who discovered the movies, Boyer performed comic sketches for soldiers while working as a hospital orderly during World War I. He began studies briefly at the Sorbonne, and was waiting for a chance to study acting at the Paris Conservatory and he went to the capital city to finish his education, but spent most of his time pursuing a theatrical career. In 1920, his quick memory won him a chance to replace the man in a stage production. In the 1920s, he not only played a suave and sophisticated ladies man on the stage, MGM signed Boyer to a contract, and he loved life in the United States, but nothing much came of his first American stay from 1929 to 1931. At first, he performed film roles only for the money, however, with the coming of sound, his deep voice made him a romantic star. His first Hollywood break came with a small role in Jean Harlows Red-Headed Woman. Subsequently, he co-starred with Claudette Colbert in the psychiatric drama Private Worlds, until the early 1930s, Boyer mainly continued making French films, and Mayerling co-starring Danielle Darrieux in 1936 made him an international star. This was followed by Orage, opposite Michèle Morgan, the offscreen Boyer was bookish and private, far removed from the Hollywood high life. In 1938, he landed his famous role as Pepe le Moko, the thief on the run in Algiers, although in the movie Boyer never said to costar Hedy Lamarr Come with me to the Casbah, this line was in the movie trailer. The line would stick with him, thanks to generations of impressionists, Boyers vocal style was also parodied on the Tom and Jerry cartoons, most notably when Tom was trying to woo a female cat. In contrast to his glamorous image, Boyer began losing his hair early, had a pronounced paunch, when Bette Davis first saw him on the set of All This, and Heaven Too, she did not recognize him and tried to have him removed. In 1943, he was awarded an Honorary Oscar Certificate for progressive cultural achievement in establishing the French Research Foundation in Los Angeles as a source of reference. He is particularly known for Gaslight in which he played a thief/murderer who tries to convince his newlywed wife that she is going insane. In 1947, he was the voice of Capt. Daniel Gregg in the Lux Radio Theaters presentation of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, in 1948, he was made a chevalier of the French Légion dhonneur. When another film with Bergman, Arch of Triumph, failed at the box office, in 1956, Boyer was a guest star on I Love Lucy

10.
Judy Garland
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Judy Garland was an American singer, actress, and vaudevillian. Garland began performing in vaudeville with her two sisters and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She made more than two films with MGM, including nine with Mickey Rooney. Garlands most famous role was as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and her other roles at MGM included Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls and Easter Parade. After 15 years, she was released from the studio and made record-breaking concert appearances, a recording career. Film appearances became fewer in her years, but included two Academy Award nominated performances in A Star Is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg. Garland received a Golden Globe Award, a Juvenile Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award, deMille Award for lifetime achievement in the film industry. She was the first woman to win a Grammy for Album of the Year for her recording of Judy at Carnegie Hall. In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the 10 greatest female stars of classic American cinema, from an early age Garland struggled in her personal life. The pressures of adolescent stardom sent her to a psychiatrist at age eighteen and her self-image was influenced by film executives who said she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen physical appearance. She was plagued by instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce and she also had a long battle with drugs and alcohol, which ultimately led to her death from a barbiturate overdose at the age of 47. Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10,1922, in Grand Rapids and she was the youngest child of Ethel Marion and Francis Avent Frank Gumm. Her parents were vaudevillians who settled in Grand Rapids to run a theater that featured vaudeville acts. She was of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, named after both of her parents and baptized at a local Episcopal church, baby shared her familys flair for song and dance. The Gumm Sisters performed there for the few years, accompanied by their mother on piano. The family relocated to Lancaster, California, in June 1926, Frank purchased and operated another theater in Lancaster, and Ethel began managing her daughters and working to get them into motion pictures

11.
Danny Kaye
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David Daniel Kaminsky, better known by his screen name Danny Kaye, was an American actor, singer, dancer, comedian, and musician. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs, Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably Wonder Man, The Kid from Brooklyn, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Inspector General, Hans Christian Andersen, White Christmas, and The Court Jester. His films were popular, especially his performances of songs and favorites such as Inchworm. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honour in 1986 for his years of work with the organization, david Daniel Kaminsky was born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn on January 18,1911. Kaye was the youngest of three born to Jacob and Clara Nemerovsky Kaminsky. Jacob and Clara and their two sons, Larry and Mac, left Dnipropetrovsk two years before his birth, he was the son born in the United States. His mother died when he was in his early teens, not long after his mothers death, Kaye and his friend Louis ran away to Florida. Kaye sang while Louis played the guitar, the pair eked out a living for a while, when Kaye returned to New York, his father did not pressure him to return to school or work, giving his son the chance to mature and discover his own abilities. Kaye said that as a boy he had wanted to be a surgeon. He held a succession of jobs after leaving school, as a jerk, insurance investigator. Most ended with his being fired and he lost the insurance job when he made an error that cost the insurance company $40,000. The dentist who hired him to look after his office at lunch hour did the same when he found Kaye using his drill on the office woodwork and he learned his trade in his teenage years in the Catskills as a tummler in the Borscht Belt. Kayes first break came in 1933 when he joined the Three Terpsichoreans and they opened in Utica, New York, where he used the name Danny Kaye for the first time. The act toured the United States, then performed in Asia with the show La Vie Paree, the troupe left for a six-month tour of the Far East on February 8,1934. While they were in Osaka, Japan, a hit the city. The hotel where Kaye and his colleagues stayed suffered heavy damage, the strong wind hurled a piece of the hotels cornice into Kayes room, had he been hit, he might well have been killed. By performance time that evening, the city was in the grip of the storm, there was no power, and the audience was restless and nervous. To calm them, Kaye went on stage, holding a flashlight to illuminate his face, the experience of trying to entertain audiences who did not speak English inspired him to the pantomime, gestures, songs, and facial expressions that eventually made his reputation

12.
New York City Center
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New York City Center is a 2, 257-seat Moorish Revival theater located at 131 West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues in Manhattan, New York City. It is one block south of Carnegie Hall, City Center is especially known as a performing home for several major dance companies as well as the Encores. Musical theater series and the Fall for Dance Festival, the facility houses the 2,257 seat main stage, two smaller theaters, four studios and a 12-story office tower. The Shriners had previously held their meetings at Carnegie Hall, according to Broadway lore, Carnegie Hall management was disturbed by the amount of cigar smoke generated during Shriners meetings and evicted them. Although the Shriners owned a clubhouse at 107 West 45th Street, large meetings had earlier held in Carnegie Hall. In 1921, Mecca Temple bought the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation movie studio site from Yale University for $400,000, the cornerstone was laid on December 13,1923 by Judge Arthur S. Tompkins, Grand Master of Masons in NY State. The dedication ceremony took place onstage, December 29,1924, the first public musical concert took place late the next year, by John Philip Sousas band, with Walter Damrosch and Willem Mengelberg among the audience. The buildings design is Neo-Moorish and features interior and exterior polychromed tile work, murals. The 102-foot wide, 54-foot tall dome is covered more than 28,000 individual tiles. The building was designed by architects Harry P. Knowles, who died before its completion, the auditorium and three Masonic lodge rooms included four M. P. Moller pipe organs. After the financial crash of 1929 the Mecca Shriners were unable to pay the taxes on the building, the Star Spangled Banner was conducted that evening by Mayor La Guardia. Each season, from the 1940s through the 1960s, City Center presented numerous music, the center was also famous as an inexpensive venue for revivals of dozens of classic and then-recent Broadway musicals, among them Oklahoma. Carousel, South Pacific, and Show Boat, one of the first dance companies to perform regularly there was the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, from 1944 to 1948. New York City Center was home to the New York City Opera, City Centers office tower was home for the production team who created the famed television show Your Show of Shows starring Sid Caesar. With the 1960s construction of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, City Center Theater lost New York City Opera and New York City Ballet, after Newbold Morris retired, Morton Baum, Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Board led City Center. With the assistance of Lincoln Center, NYCB and NYCO were organized into corporations with City Center of Music. CCMD leased the New York State Theater from Lincoln Center, which leased it from the City of New York, the films were selected by Cinémathèque Française founder and director Henri Langlois, from its archive of more than 50,000 films. Chosen for their significance and contributions to the history of filmmaking, they included work from official film industries as well as current, the program was the most diverse film exhibition held in the United States to date